But for CPU power comparisons I suggest some other analysis. Since so much of the system power is drawn by all anciliary components, the % improvement calculations show overall system improvement BUT NOT the CPU improvement. The CPU improvement is really the more interesting figure.

Can you isolate the system power draw excl. the CPU? Perhaps the best way to do this would be to put a ULV low clock CPU into the socket and use that as the "base line" for the system draw. Alternatively, write a utility to put the CPU into "deep sleep HALT" and check the power in this condition. Use this as the baseline.

You will probably see the baseline around 100W, so the difference betweem say 150W and 160W would be calculated as (160-100)/(150-100)-100%=20% and not the very small figures as article currently shows. Reply

Considering this article was all about a core stepping the claimed better power consumption, I think they totally underplayed the power improvements. A reduction in total system power of 5-7% soley from a CPU stepping is very impressive. This works out to around 20% for the CPU alone. And it only gets better when it's overclocked.

Also its wrong to write off an entire stepping for overclocking potential when you have only tested 1 CPU and only used stock cooling at that. Reply

quote:For $266 you now have a tough decision to make: do you buy two 3.0GHz cores or four 2.40GHz cores? In our last review we found that if you're doing any amount of 3D rendering or media encoding, the Core 2 Quad Q6600 at $266 ends up being the better value. Of course, if you want the best of both worlds you could always overclock the 2.40GHz Q6600, giving you four, much faster cores.

I'm not sure I fully understand the answer. IF you are doing some media encoding, the Q6600 is a better value. What about regular desktop usage? For the average person, which of these is the better value? Reply

Did you measure temperature differences under load? Even when the new stepping draws more power, the Intel spec sheet's temp curves are quite different... does G0 run hotter or cooler in practice? Reply

Or, it could have something to do with the fact that it's an article about a new stepping of an INTEL chip. This site is so pro Intel that they spent a year or more recommending Athlon X2s as the chips to buy. Must have been a conspiracy so that when the Core 2 was released they could show their true colors. Reply

Your overclocking results mean nothing if you don't list what type of cooling you used? Stock Intel cooler? Tuniq Tower 120? Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme? Typhoon VX? Zalamn? Scythe? Noctua? The only thing you said was "our max was 3.51GHz (390 x 9.0) without resorting to improved cooling" so by that statement I'm assuming you must have been using air but which HSF?

How can you miss this? Indians aren't supposed to make mistakes, just kidding :) We're all human.....at least I think :)

Could you also comment on whether there were any noticeable differences between the CPUs with regards to temps? Kinda related to the wattage of course, but actual idle/load temperature values would help too. Thanks. Reply

I didn't see listed which board was used to test overclockability of the two chips. Lots of boards still have issues with clocking G0s to high FSB speeds, especially at a 9x multi as the previous poster mentioned. Reply

I have two G0's and it seems there's a great deal of variation even for two CPUs in the same batch.

You should check the VID (using Core Temp) of the CPU. A lower VID means Intel rated the CPU to run at stock with a lower voltage, generally meaning more overclocking headroom. Of my two G0 Q6600's, one was 1.3125V while the other was 1.2750V.

Also, the 9X multiplier is harder to overclock on than lower multipliers (for reasons unknown to me but I've encountered it myself as well as read other people commenting thus). My 1.3125V Q6600 can boot and run at 3.6GHz (450x8) almost stably (it can Prime95 all four cores for at least 20 minutes) but trying to do the same at 400x9 will always fail. I know that 400MHz FSB works since I can boot at 400x8, so I'm assuming the other factor would be the multiplier. Reply

Would it be possible to get a VID of 0.8250v? As that it what Core Temp reads for my G0 Q6600, but I have doubts as the the accuracy as I'm x64 Vista and Core temp cannot find the temps (the rest of the read stats check out though).

Since OC potential varies so much with these CPU's are there any companies that test the CPU's they buy from Intel/AMD and sort them based on the OC potential they have? Memory companies often test and sort their memory and package them according to their quality. It would be nice to get a CPU that's been tested for better then average OC potential without having to pay $1000 for an Extreme brand CPU. I wouldn't mind paying a little bit more for a Q6600 that I knew had some good OC room. Reply

Both chips used the same VID surprisingly enough, that's part of what made this test so easy. I have seen differing results at 8x vs. 9x multipliers, but it didn't seem to make a huge difference when I tried it with these chips. I'll keep playing around with them though.

My Pentium M barely operates stable at 2.13GHz using 1.18v and it's obviously single core, so it just sounds odd that a 2.4Ghz Quadcore could have an even lower VID than 1.18v even with the 90nm -> 65nm difference. Maybe that is just me though! Reply